The right to fertility coverage

Host: Noah Parrish, Gender Justice Communications Director

Guests: Erin Maye Quade, Gender Justice Special Projects Advisor, and Miraya Gran, Minnesota Building Families Coalition infertility advocate

At Gender Justice, we advocate for gender equity under the law. We also subscribe to the philosophy of reproductive justice, a concept developed by Black women advocates in the 1990s defined as “the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, to have children, to not have children, and to parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.” Access to infertility treatment and services is a key component of this right. 

Though specifics on state laws vary widely, 22 states and the District of Columbia require insurance to cover some kind of fertility treatment — but Minnesota isn’t one of them.

In this episode we talk with Miraya Gran, a leader of the Minnesota Building Families Coalition, and Gender Justice Special Projects Advisor Erin Maye Quade, who in her role as a Minnesota legislator is lead Senate author of the Minnesota Building Families Act, which would align Minnesota law with the position of the medical community as well as the reproductive rights, health, and justice communities.

Links to resources mentioned in the show:

• Minnesota Building Families Coalition

• Sign up for action alerts

• Follow the Minnesota Building Families Coalition on Facebook and Instagram

• Infertility insurance coverage by state 

• Minnesota Building Families Act legislation 

• 2024 letter to the Minnesota Senate Health and Human Services Committee from Gender Justice in support of the Minnesota Building Families Act 

• Disparities in access to effective treatment for infertility in the United States: an Ethics Committee opinion | American Society for Reproductive Medicine 

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